Abstract:

Due to the implementation of the Bologna Process, the use of the web and the new communication technologies for higher education, have increased steadily during the past years. During the whole academic course 2008/2009 we used an educational blog as a complement in the subject “Environmental Microbiology” that we teach in the degree of Environmental Sciences given by our university.

We used to select scientific news or specialized articles about environmental microbiology instead of merely describe the usual matters that can be found in textbooks of that particular field of knowledge. The entries were published with weekly periodicity and tried to explain the scientific cases in a simple way in order to be more comprehensible for the students and to look forward a highest participation of the students in its own learning. They were allowed to left comments in two different ways: by previous identification or by an anonymous manner. Although the students were reluctant to leave write comments in the different entries they showed a positive perception of the educational quality on the Microbiology course according to the different items used by our University for quality evaluation.

As a tool for diffusion of scientific knowledge in the society the blog succeeded completely. According to Statscounter, during the first period of survey (15 months, from January 2008 to March 2009) the total numbers of page loads were 56,846. In this second period (12 months, from April 2009 to March 2010) the total numbers of page loads were 132,081. Nowadays, the blog is ranked as the result Nº 10 when the Spanish word “microbiología” is used in a Google search.

Our conclusion is that the use of blogs or other web tools not only improves the transmission of knowledge from the professor to the students, but also develops a more sympathetic view on the subject to be learned. With the imminent implementation in our university of the new degrees that are in accord with the Bologna procedure, we expect to improve this tools looking for a bigger participation of the students in their learning skills.

Keywords:

Blog, quality evaluation, Bologna Process.